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by on_the_train 523 days ago
Since people started using marketing tactics to promote themselves. WFC is a $100 name for a $1 concept. Other entries in the tech hall of shame are mersenne twister and dependency injection
2 comments

Like calling random vector functional link networks and single-layer feed-forward networks with random hidden weight an "Extreme Learning Machine".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_learning_machine#Contr...

>Controversy

>There are two main complaints from academic community concerning this work, the first one is about "reinventing and ignoring previous ideas", the second one is about "improper naming and popularizing", as shown in some debates in 2008 and 2015.[33] In particular, it was pointed out in a letter[34] to the editor of IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks that the idea of using a hidden layer connected to the inputs by random untrained weights was already suggested in the original papers on RBF networks in the late 1980s; Guang-Bin Huang replied by pointing out subtle differences.[35] In a 2015 paper,[1] Huang responded to complaints about his invention of the name ELM for already-existing methods, complaining of "very negative and unhelpful comments on ELM in neither academic nor professional manner due to various reasons and intentions" and an "irresponsible anonymous attack which intends to destroy harmony research environment", arguing that his work "provides a unifying learning platform" for various types of neural nets,[1] including hierarchical structured ELM.[28] In 2015, Huang also gave a formal rebuttal to what he considered as "malign and attack."[36] Recent research replaces the random weights with constrained random weights.[6][37]

But at least it's easier to say, rolls off the tongue smoothly, and makes better click bait for awesome blog postings!

I also love how the cool buzzwords "Reservoir Computing" and "Liquid State Machines" sounds like such deep stuff.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40903302

>"I'll tell you why it's not a scam, in my opinion: Tide goes in, tide goes out, never a miscommunication." -Bill O'Reilly

How about rebranding WFC as "Extreme Liquid Quantum Sudoko Machines"? ;)

Then there's "Crab Computing"!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42701560

[...] If billiard balls aren't creepy enough for you, live soldier crabs of the species Mictyris guinotae can be used in place of the billiard balls.

https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/04/resear...

https://www.wired.com/2012/04/soldier-crabs/

http://www.complex-systems.com/abstracts/v20_i02_a02.html

Robust Soldier Crab Ball Gate

Yukio-Pegio Gunji, Yuta Nishiyama. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Kobe University, Kobe 657-8501, Japan.

Andrew Adamatzky. Unconventional Computing Centre. University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom.

Abstract

Soldier crabs Mictyris guinotae exhibit pronounced swarming behavior. Swarms of the crabs are tolerant of perturbations. In computer models and laboratory experiments we demonstrate that swarms of soldier crabs can implement logical gates when placed in a geometrically constrained environment.

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2017/02/26/crab-computing/

What would be a better name?
Constraint-based tiling maybe?
Permutation City with a nod to Egan?
WFC in particular wasn't even new. The exact same thing was published by someone else before. I don't know if he gave it a name though
The difference between Deepak Chopra's abuse of Quantum Physics terminology and WFC's is that WFC actually works and is useful for something, and its coiner publishes his results for free as open source software and papers, so he deserves more poetic license than a pretentious new-age shill hawking books and promises of immortality for cash like Deepak.

Here are some notes I wrote and links I found when researching WFC (which is admittedly a catchier name than "Variable State Independent Decaying Sum (VSIDS) branching heuristics in conflict-driven clause-learning (CDCL) Boolean satisfiability (SAT) solvers"):

https://donhopkins.com/home/wfc-notes.txt

    Here are some notes I wrote and links I found when researching Wave
    Function Collapse (WFC). -Don Hopkins

    Wave Function Collapse

    Maxim Gumin

    Paul Merrell

    https://paulmerrell.org/research/

    https://paulmerrell.org/model-synthesis/

    Liang et al

    Jia Hui Liang, Vijay Ganesh, Ed Zulkoski, Atulan Zaman, and
    Krzysztof Czarnecki. 2015. Understanding VSIDS branching heuristics
    in conflict-driven clauselearning SAT solvers. In Haifa Verification
    Conference. Springer, 225–241.

    WaveFunctionCollapse is constraint solving in the wild

    https://escholarship.org/content/qt1f29235t/qt1f29235t.pdf?t=qwp94i

    Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP)
    Machine Learning (ML)
[...lots more stuff...]